If marketers have no bread, from this year they also have no cookies, but despite that, they are not hungry. The long-anticipated elimination of third-party cookies, until now a powerful tool of digital marketing, became a reality at the beginning of this year. Google’s Chrome browser disabled cookies for one percent of its users – about thirty million people – at the beginning of January. By the end of the year, cookies will permanently disappear from it. As is known, they were one of the primary ways technology companies tracked user behavior on the internet. Shadow Tracking What is the difference between first-party and third-party cookies? Without first-party cookies, which are stored by the website the user directly visits, it would not be possible, for example, to leave products in the shopping cart of the online store you visited, or you would always have to re-enter your login details. Third-party cookies are used for tracking. More precisely, tracking your activity on the internet, i.e., which pages you visit and what you generally do while online. They do this to indicate to advertisers your interests and preferences based on which they then display personalized ads. Or, as it is technically said, for ‘enhancing advertising capabilities to optimize ad relevance according to user affinities’. They are not completely harmless either: if used in a wrong, malicious way, they can harm the user and pose a security threat. Privacy advocates on the internet, as far as it is possible, have always been particularly sensitive to third-party cookies. However, with the entry into force of the famous European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), this marketing tool has been ringing its death knell. Other Methods Does this mean that digital marketing will now face a hundred troubles? Not really, marketing experts believe. It is important to mention that third-party cookies are just one of the available mechanisms used in the digital advertising industry and data collection, explains Mario Frančešević, CEO of the agency Seek and Hit. —
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– After their elimination, we have other ways for these actions: first-party cookies, tags/pixels based on first-party cookies, and new solutions such as clean data rooms, marketing clouds, customer data platforms, Google’s Privacy Sandbox, and cohort-based targeting, which are considered to somewhat replace the role of third-party cookies, Frančešević asserts.
Clean rooms, or more precisely, data repositories that serve to match and compare identities, can also help bridge the data gap that was collected by cookies, but this method will most often require direct cooperation among large companies, thereby excluding many advertisers and publishers.
Pretend Privacy As Frančešević adds, cookies are certainly a big risk for users because their data can leak to unwanted parties, but it should also be understood that megacorporations like Google, Apple, Meta, and others do not introduce such changes solely to improve user privacy, although they will often emphasize this as one of the main reasons. – We need to be realistic and assume that the mentioned solutions will not fully replace the elimination of that technology. There are reasons for caution and concern: for example, the Privacy Sandbox cannot fully replace the cookies that Google plans to eliminate soon in the Chrome browser. The Privacy Sandbox provides the possibility of using several tools that fulfill specific functions in measuring and analyzing data, but certainly not entirely the same as third-party cookies did, Frančešević assesses. In the world of programming and cybersecurity, a sandbox denotes a secure and isolated environment. The Privacy Sandbox is Google’s product that aimed to reconcile two opposing sides: allowing advertisers to conduct targeted advertising while also maintaining user privacy. First-party data, or user data, should always come first, says Marko Jambrešić, business lead at iProspect. – Therefore, my advice for years has been an absolute focus on collecting first-party data. This would briefly mean investing in login data and managing it because that is almost the only way to effectively communicate with existing customers. As for third-party data, or what I like to call remarketing cookies, we must come to terms with the fact that we will no longer be able to use companies or tools that sold such data and with which we addressed visitors to websites again, Jambrešić tells us. Loss of Signal That the role of first-party data is becoming increasingly important is also agreed upon by marketing expert Olga Antecka at RTB House. – In e-commerce, where transactions and interactions are actually digital, collecting and analyzing user data is key. This data, whether derived from online activities or combined with offline interactions, is a powerful tool for enhancing user experiences and tailoring offers to individual users. However, the complete elimination of third-party cookies raises questions about the future use of this rich data. Furthermore, the shift towards privacy-respecting advertising is not limited to the elimination of third-party cookies in Google Chrome. A much broader change is occurring, with many changes introduced in the regulatory and technical environment, which reduces many additional practices such as fingerprinting. All these changes cause what is called ‘loss of signal’. With fewer available signals, first-party data becomes increasingly valuable, especially for retargeting campaigns, which raises the question of whether it will be possible to utilize this valuable data in the future, Antecka says. Impact of DMA and DSA As our interlocutors reveal, the elimination of third-party cookies has caused great confusion among advertisers, in the media, and in agencies. As is usually the case, our market always prepares late for changes, says Marko Jambrešić. – The tactic remains that user attention is more important than ever. This is actually a universal rule: a creative solution sells, and it must attract attention, while the media are the tool that promotes that creative solution at the right place and at the right time. This is simply called context, so I would say that contextual advertising is making a big comeback, even though it has never really disappeared, Jambrešić believes. —
